18537: Esser: COHA: Waiting for Something Bad to Happen (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. E s s e r <torx@mail.joimail.com>

Council On Hemispheric Affairs
http://www.coha.org

Memorandum to the Press 04.07
Friday February 13, 2004


Haiti: Waiting for Something Bad to Happen

Political violence in Haiti continues to mount, placing the
country's hard-won democracy in an increasingly perilous position and
raising widespread fears of a violent coup that would return a
military-led caretaker junta to power.  Those who are guilty of
jeopardizing the nation's stability include a collection of brigands
who participated in the 1991-1994 military junta, along with
paramilitary thugs and those guilty of human rights violations in
that period (like Emmanuel Constant, and Gen. Raul Cedras), as well
as members of the island's tiny economic elite.

The "democratic opposition," made up of Democratic Convergence and
Group of 184, has demonstrated its true nature and what was once
considered an opposition movement-albeit violent and narrowly
constituted-is now in a de facto alliance with a paramilitary force
made up of armed street gangs that pose a genuine danger of being
able to stage a concerted attack on the Haitian state and its
democratic institutions.



CARICOM straddles the fence, as does the OAS, while the State
Department is already in the bad neighbor's next-door yard.

The State Department under Secretary of State Powell and his
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger
Noriega, at first appears to have remained inactive over Haiti, which
is in itself a policy.  Rather than rushing down anti-riot equipment
to Port-Au-Prince, as it repeatedly has done in other cases where
constitutional governments are being threatened by street mobs, U.S.
officials have sat on their hands waiting for a successful coup
scenario to unfold.  Meanwhile, rather than seek to trigger a process
in the OAS to pacify the burgeoning threat to the Aristide
government, and most of all, lift the U.S. imposed freeze on hundreds
of millions of dollars in aid pledged to Port-Au-Prince (which has
economically asphyxiated the island), Noriega and his department
stall for time and await some new incident in which the Aristide
government is further undermined and discredited.  Meanwhile, the
opposition groups, which have long been funded by the National
Endowment for Democracy, through the International Republican
Institute, and coddled by hardliner Republican policymakers, seek to
preserve the legacy of longtime Aristide-hater, former Senator Jesse
Helms.

Given the opposition's heavy dependence on U.S. support, an open
and specific denunciation of their obstructionist tactics by the Bush
administration could immediately force the Democratic Convergence and
Group 184 to abandon their attempts to overthrow the Aristide
government by intimidation, threats and street violence.  Refusing to
force them to turn to negotiation, the administration has not uttered
even a weak acknowledgment of the latter's culpability in the
deteriorating situation in Haiti.  Instead, it covertly works for
Aristide's resignation, which in fact is Washington's very policy, as
it acknowledges that it is preparing to house upwards of 15,000
Haitian boat people after they are interdicted on their way to
Florida.

 With its inferences that a resolution of this "crisis"-the
euphemism for an open attempt at a coup-might require the
consideration of the resignation of President Aristide, Washington
has demonstrated yet again, aside from its meaningless rhetoric, the
inability of the Powell team to project a strong assent for
democratic governance to the rest of the hemisphere.



The State Department Eyes Haiti

Over the past two hundred years, Haiti has been no
stranger to instances of political violence, coups and the perversion
of democracy.  Many of them were executed with the support of the
United States, which has at times considered popular democratic
government in Latin America to be a privilege awarded only to those
nations deemed sufficiently ebullient in their unwavering
pro-Washington subservience.  The latest chapter in the disheartening
drama is now unfolding, as the in part U.S.-funded Democratic
Convergence and Group of 184, long the favored instruments of
Washington hardline Latin American policymakers, redouble their
efforts to destabilize the elected government of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide through violent takeovers of nearly a dozen
towns in northern and western Haiti that began on February 5. These
venomously anti-Aristide groups are attempting to cloak their naked
self-serving and illegal actions by insisting that what took place in
Gonaives and other urban areas was a supposed popular uprising
against an oppressive government, to which they were not directly
linked.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has coolly signaled its passivity
if not acquiescence regarding the effort of this non-representative
cabal to oust President Aristide, who was popularly elected in what
was only the third free election in Haiti's history. The State
Department, with practiced diplomatic obfuscation, has stated that
"we recognize that reaching a political settlement will require some
fairly thorough changes in the way Haiti is governed." A State
Department official later clarified this statement by noting that
this "could indeed involve changes in Aristide's position."  Thus,
while President Bush and his would-be kingmakers in the bureau of
Western Hemisphere Affairs tout their efforts to build democracy
abroad, the president's Latin American team headed by the State
Department's Roger Noriega and Dan Fisk, along with the White House's
Otto Reich, all but openly support the unseating of an Aristide
government.  These actions are a clear signal that the most flagrant
excesses of Cold War policy towards the hemisphere are still being
nurtured in Washington by those who emotionally need some leftist
figure to bash, even if such a person poses no threat to this
country's national interests.



The Opposition Revealed

What previously had been deemed a situation of growing
political tension and a challenge by a narrowly-based opportunistic
group has now erupted into an open rebellion. This self-denominated
"democratic opposition" previously had not ruled out all talks with
the government. But starting last December, all pretenses have been
abandoned.  Previously, Group 184 justified its refusal to reengage
in the political process by citing perceived transgressions by the
Aristide government: its corruption, its inability to establish an
appropriately secure climate of security, its failures to combat the
politicization of the police force, and a number of other accusations
repeated as well by the U.S. Embassy in Port-Au-Prince.  The
opposition's modus operandi was to engage in subtle plotting with
former military personnel and rapid anti-Aristide elements for the
common purpose of restraining the president from implementing his
left-of-center platform, but it incredulously insisted that it
entirely abided by its non-violent principles.  But now, the
opposition has finally openly acknowledged what the vast majority of
Haitians have long known: that it has no natural leader or a coherent
agenda other than ousting Aristide from office by any means.  It sees
the Haitian president as a dangerous radical who must be purged at
any cost because of his demobilization of the Haitian army, long the
tool of repression employed by the Haitian elite and whose former
officers remain the backbone of the opposition parties.

For example, in a recent interview, Democratic Convergence leader
Evans Paul stated, "We are willing to negotiate through which door he
[President Aristide] leaves the palace, through the front door or the
back door."   Such gutter statements made by an un-elected official
with very dubious credentials and who lacks a significant
constituency make clear the reason why the government's repeated
attempts at negotiation with the opposition have failed.  The problem
may be that Democratic Convergence and Group 184 are not so much
political parties with a predictable platform of demands that they
are willing to negotiate and enter into later compromises. Rather,
they are vehicles for the ambition of a small group of often
self-serving island heavyweights who hope to achieve through a
violent power grab what they could not win through the ballot box.
There is no mystery about the opposition's preposterous intentions.
Evans Paul, along with opposition leaders Gerard Pierre-Charles,
Victor Benoit, Charles Baker and Andre Apaid, have repeatedly
implied, if not openly stated, a preferential option for violent
street actions or uprooting (dechoukaj), rather than elections.


CARICOM's Initiative

Most recently, the opposition has stymied the latest mediation
effort by the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM), who sent a
delegation headed by Bahamian Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell and
CARICOM Assistant Secretary General Colin Granderson to Haiti on
February 4, in an attempt to find a resolution to the standoff.  The
opposition once again refused any attempts at negotiation, with Evans
Paul, contending that, "If we negotiate with Aristide, we lose our
credibility," a concern on the part of an opposition group that has
only won negligible electoral support and is widely accused of
bribing crowds to participate in their marches.   The armed takeovers
in Gonaives, long a center of political activism in Haiti and
integral to the political opposition regarding the Duvalier
dictatorship, involved heavy casualties. The fourth largest Haitian
city was considered one of Aristide's strongest bases of popular
support. The fact that the offensive against Gonaives began after
CARICOM's diplomatic initiative was formulated, was an affront
against that body. CARICOM's failed (at least for now) mission to
Haiti raised widespread accusations that the opposition's meetings
with its representatives were essentially a diversionary tactic
intended to buy time while also distracting attention from the
opposition's continued political obstructionism.  As Haiti's General
Counsel Ira Kurzban described it, "I believe the incident in Gonaives
was timed purposely to downplay CARICOM and the opposition's
non-response...to distract the 'public' from the real story."  The
question deserves to be asked whether CARICOM was being used and
whether the opposition believed that the body was willing to settle
at the lowest common denominator, even if it meant establishing a
regency on the island, severely limiting Aristide's authority, or
even agree to some formula which would ease the Haitian President out
of office.  But the basic flaw of CARICOM's position was that it
classified Aristide and the opposition in the same category with
equal status- the victim being twinned with the victimizer.



Villains of Haiti's Past Resurface in Gonaives

The recent opposition takeover in Gonaives held clear and
disturbing echoes of the brutal violence and political oppression
that marked Haiti's most recent period of military rule, which ended
in 1994 after the U.S. led-intervention which returned Aristide to
power.  This followed President Aristide's ouster in a military coup
in 1991, only months after he had been elected to his first term.
The attack and takeover of Gonaives ostensibly was led by a group
formerly known as the Cannibal Army and renamed the Artibonite
Resistance Front, many of whose street leaders were once members of
FRAPH, the murderous paramilitary organization that terrorized Haiti
on behalf of its military rulers in the early 1990s.  This
paramilitary force was headed at the time by Emmanuel Constant, who
was responsible for several thousand political killings.  Constant,
who admitted on an appearance on "Sixty Minutes," that he had been on
the payroll of the CIA, remains at large in New York City, as a
result of a de facto asylum granted to him by the Clinton
administration, which has been continued by the Bush White House.

In fact, one of the leaders of the recent attack was Jean Tatoune, a
former FRAPH leader who was sentenced to forced labor for life in
2000 for his participation in the 1994 massacre in Raboteau, a
village near Gonaives where almost a score of Aristide supporters
were systematically murdered by military and FRAPH thugs.  Tatoune
was subsequently imprisoned in Gonaives, from where he escaped in
August 2002, only to return last week with his band of street
fighters in an attack in which the city prison was destroyed and the
remaining inmates were freed (including some jailed for drug
offenses), government buildings, stores and homes burned and more
than 30 people, police and civilians, killed.

As Robert Fatton, a University of Virginia professor and
political analyst on Haiti, put it, "If what is happening in Gonaives
is the opposition's vision for Haiti, then the future is pretty grim
indeed."  Meanwhile, Andre Apaid, the wealthy businessmen who leads
the opposition Group 184, asserted that "We continue to maintain the
nonviolent approach." This is a hugely tongue-in-cheek statement
because his circle of political comrades consistently has called for
the reconstitution of the army and his associate, Evans Paul, openly
has preached the kind of violent acts that have been perpetrated in
Gonaives by former army members.


Washington Demonstrates Its Complicity in Opposition's Intransigence

As political violence has mounted in Haiti over the past six months,
the State Department has made nothing but anemic purrings regarding
its concern over the violence in the country, despite the obvious
fact that given the opposition's ideological and financial ties with
the U.S. government, a clear denunciation of the latter's tactics by
the State Department would most certainly have had to produce an
immediate alteration in the situation in Haiti.  Should the Bush
administration now demand that Group 184 and Democratic Convergence
nominate their representatives to the Provisional Electoral Council
in order to allow parliamentary elections to proceed, while
expressing its support for the integrity of the democratic process in
Haiti and the need for President Aristide to serve out his full term,
the opposition groups will have to change their strategy from
featuring a bellicose mixture of non-negotiation and violent street
action.


The State Department's Ideologues

Yet no such call has been forthcoming; on the contrary, the State
Department is subtlety  supporting the opposition's attempts to
undemocratically oust President Aristide in a scenario of "regime
change" that must by now be quite familiar to Secretary of State
Colin Powell.  The reasons for Washington's openly anti-Aristide
policy are not hard to discern.  U.S. foreign policy towards Latin
America remains in the hands of a small group of hardline
policymakers led by Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega and
Special Presidential Envoy Otto Reich, the ideological heirs to
former Senator Jesse Helms, who is said to have never met a
right-wing Latin American dictator he didn't like.  Conversely, he
also had little affection for democratically-elected presidents,
among which was his nemesis Aristide, who he considered to be the
next Castro of the Caribbean.  These Washington extremists have had
no interest in ensuring that Aristide serves out his constitutionally
mandated tenure; on the contrary, they are no doubt eager to see him
go, and hence quite content to let the opposition continue to wreak
havoc without meddlesome interference from the Washington other than
a stream of pro-forma statements about how troubled the White House
is by the violence in Haiti, but unaccompanied by desperately needed
anti-riot equipment shipments to Port-Au-Prince.


Needless to say, the State Department has a litany of anti-Aristide
criticisms they are happy to cite to reporters off-the-record in
order to justify their tacit endorsement of the overthrow of
President Aristide.  The most common is the old but still resilient
accusation regarding the supposedly rigged 2000 elections and the
Aristide government's failure to comply with the provisions of
Resolution 822 of the Organization of American States, which was
passed in 2000, to provide a framework for the reestablishment of
"political normalcy" in Haiti.  First of all, any suggestion that the
so-called Haitian "electoral crisis" still continues is pure rubbish,
given that the eight senators whose legitimacy was being questioned
at the time have all since left the Senate and Aristide repeatedly
has since eagerly called for new elections.  Washington is also well
aware that the Aristide government's failure to hold new legislative
elections, especially given that the terms of a third of the
parliament expired last month, has left Haiti without any legal
legislative body because the opposition refuses to accept its
designated seats on the Provisional Elections Council, which is an
essential first step for any balloting to occur. These events
effectively have forced the president to rule by decree.  The State
Department persistently neglects to mention that this is the only
obstacle to the prompt holding of elections in Haiti, at the same
time that it has never vigorously condemned the opposition's
persistent refusal to participate in the electoral council that is
required to supervise the elections. Nor has the State Department
condemned the opposition's open rejection of the entire concept of
elections and a democratic transfer of power.


The opposition's justification for this intransigence, insofar as it
provides one, is the lack of security in Haiti, another common
complaint of the Bush administration.  It is to be wondered, however,
what type of security the Aristide government is expected to provide
as it struggles to maintain a 4000-member national police force to
afford protection to 8 million Haitians as part of a total Haitian
federal budget of less than $300 million dollars a year. Meanwhile,
the N.Y.C. Police Department has almost 62,000 officers to provide
comparable service to approximately the same number of people.  This
is especially the case, since the Aristide government has received no
direct bilateral aid from the United States since 2000.  The Aristide
government is widely accused of failing to professionalize and
de-politicize the police force; however, it was the United States and
Canada which cut off the aid that they were providing, following
Aristide's return to Haiti in 1994, for police training and
professionalization, and they were the countries who originally
trained the often criticized police and set up the courts after the
military was overthrown.


Condemnations of the Aristide government for its lack of commitment
to democratic procedures and its failure to establish a much-desired
climate of domestic security verges on hypocrisy on Washington's
part, which has sought virtually at every turn to cripple the ability
of the government to govern effectively, and consistently has
systematically supported the opposition in its unceasing efforts to
sabotage democracy in Haiti.


Bush Administration Remains the Ultimate Culprit

While the Aristide government remains poised precariously in
Port-au-Prince and fears of a coup and a new wave of political
violence and repression sweep across Haiti, the State Department
appears content to watch passively from afar, perhaps hoping that the
elite-dominated opposition will have more success in unseating
Aristide than a comparable U.S.-backed opposition had in the case of
another pesky Latin American populist, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
The Bush administration's refusal to openly condemn the activities of
the opposition has made it more than obvious that a decade has not
been long enough to eradicate the Cold War mentality from the halls
of the State Department, or at least the halls of its Western
Hemisphere bureau.  On the contrary, Washington's covert battle
against the hemisphere's dangerously "leftist" leaders is alive and
well, led by the ever-vigilant keystone cops, Noriega and Reich, with
Haiti's hard-won democracy perhaps becoming its next casualty.  Don't
be surprised if Constant and Gen. Cedras and his drug-related fortune
in the millions are once again seen in Port-au-Prince, as Washington
navigates to restore the ancien régime there.


This analysis was prepared by Jessica Leight, Research Fellow.
Issued 13 February, 2004

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an
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www.coha.org; or contact our Washington offices by phone (202)
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